![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Devil and Miss Jones
Jan. 23rd, 2005 01:03 pmThe movie is from 1941. There's no sex or violence. It's G-rated beyond belief. And it's subversive.
There's a scene where a policeman is trying to coerce a character, and another character says "If there are no charges we can leave." When they try to stop him with trumped up charges, he says "When they try to get you for spitting on the street when you haven't, the next thing you know they're taking away the Constitution." The whole scene builds from there. It's played for laughs, but they are what I call serious laughs. The police eventually let them go for silly reasons, but the import of the scene is that standing up for yourself and your rights is the most important thing of all.
It deals openly and humorously with class issues -- specifically the cluelessness of the rich about the poor.
I wish I could say, "Rent it," to every social studies class in the country, but I know that since it's in black and white the majority of the students wouldn't pay attention.
There's a scene where a policeman is trying to coerce a character, and another character says "If there are no charges we can leave." When they try to stop him with trumped up charges, he says "When they try to get you for spitting on the street when you haven't, the next thing you know they're taking away the Constitution." The whole scene builds from there. It's played for laughs, but they are what I call serious laughs. The police eventually let them go for silly reasons, but the import of the scene is that standing up for yourself and your rights is the most important thing of all.
It deals openly and humorously with class issues -- specifically the cluelessness of the rich about the poor.
I wish I could say, "Rent it," to every social studies class in the country, but I know that since it's in black and white the majority of the students wouldn't pay attention.
